The Republican’s biggest problem going into the 2012 elections is that there’s nobody presenting a clear, forward looking vision of the future. The issues are important, obviously, but the kind of leadership that wins votes for either party is the sense that the candidate has some unique, confident foresight. It’s not enough to just criticize the current administration. The doom and gloom about spending may be warranted and citing the founding fathers may be inspiring but neither is an effective substitute for a passionately stated sense of what is to come next.
So, who’s doing that? Who even looks like they are capable of doing it?
If you want to know why Donald Effing Trump is surging in the polls, it’s because he at least sort of kind of has that sense of forward looking – he has to as a businessman – and he’s got the field of quasi-visionaries more or less all to himself. Sarah Palin Is chipper on the stump but isn’t really projecting forward and I’ve never been convinced she’s going to actually run, anyway.
Which brings me to James O’Keefe.
Playboy has a really great article by Jordan Lieberman on O’Keefe online right now and if somehow you can avoid being distracted by girls smiling at you from the surrounding ads, it’s well worth a read. It’s not a hit piece but a well-researched profile of one of the most effective and controversial young conservatives in America today. (And the others in contention for that title are largely people who’ve worked with O’Keefe at some point, like Lila Rose.)
As the article points out, O’Keefe and Hannah Giles took down ACORN in a few months. That was something the right has been trying to do for decades. But all that efficacy seems to be in another dimension from conservative electoral politics. That’s in part because the tactics of O’Keefe and Giles are a product of the high-tech present day. O’Keefe has said, “This ain’t your father’s 60 Minutes” but it’s still, by and large, your father’s Republican party.
The GOP doesn’t know how to integrate an O’Keefe. The rank and file laud him and the opposition clearly hates his guts but the Republicans still have acknowledged old-time mediocrities like John Boehner running the show.
And now I’ll circle back to that vision thing. Lieberman concludes his piece with advice for O’Keefe and I think it’s good advice for all conservatives as well. Substitute ‘The Republican Party” for “O’Keefe” in the following paragraph.
If O’Keefe were my client, I would hand him a flowchart of the positive people and the parasites in his life. Then I would take away his internet connection until he could come up with a long-term plan. And I don’t mean a new hit list of liberal targets to lampoon. He needs to figure out how to leverage what he’s accomplished into a paying gig that doesn’t rely on the generosity of anonymous wealthy donors with an ax to grind.
Is anyone going to heed that call?
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Sounds about right and I think an overwhelming majority of Tea Party supporters would agree. We’re not craving another Reagan so much as we’re desperate for someone to rally the troops and confront our opponents without hesitation or minced words.
In other words, fight back with the same tenacity the Left clearly employs against us. Doesn’t mean we have to stoop to their juvenile offensiveness, but don’t retreat!
I’m confident that I speak for most of us when saying that we, as a “movement”, are almost physically sick of the milquetoast professional politicians in the Repub leadership. Why is it so hard to find someone who believes what they say and is willing to defend their positions, instead of accepting the Left’s premises?
That’s why so many of us want Palin to run. She’s one of the few who isn’t afraid of a fight, and a fight is exactly what is in store for 2012. This will be one of the most significant elections in our history, and will define who we are as a nation going forward. The situation is most grave and we cannot afford another Dole or McCain.
You can tell that the left likes the Alinsky tactic “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.” because they keep trying to identify a conservative leader to destroy. To that end, I think conservatives are best served by not having a leader right now because it gives the left nobody to demonize.
You can tell a lot about the modern Republican Party by noticing that the people it excoriates the most… aren’t the ones on the enemy’s side, they’re the ones on their own side who take the battle to the enemy. They’re in the same position as Democrats were towards the Soviets in the ’70′s and ’80s: they’re not looking to fight and win; they’re looking to surrender every issue on the best possible terms.